How to hold on frame waiting for event?

I am sure I will receive the beginner question of the year with this one:
Just starting w/ Flash 8. Using AS2 to simply make a graphic (and its clickable area) proceed to next frame when clicked. When input :
button.onRelease = function() {
gotoAndStop(2)
the movie proceeds to Frame 2 without a pause for the click event.
I have tried a stop(); prior to the above function, but no action after click.
Basically trying to understand why frame 1 with the event handler AS does not pause to accept the mouse click?
I apologize for such a basic question, but my eyeballs are bleeding from trying to figure this out.
Thanks in advance for any help.